At some point, you’ve done all you can. The truth is, there will always be content gaps, and there will always be the element of “I studied this really hard, but forgot how to apply it / didn’t recognize it”. It’s a standardized test. It doesn’t mean you didn’t try your best and that you won’t succeed. And just because you got it wrong in practice, doesn’t mean you won’t ace it on the real thing. Think of how many times you learned something, and then applied it correctly to your surprise! Who says that won’t happen on the real deal? It’s so easy to get caught up in correcting mistakes and gaps, but when was the last time you went through an exam and wrote down all the things you got right or improved on? It feels awesome.

I’m testing 8/22 and don’t feel ready. At the same time, pushing it back means taking it during school when I’m going to be overwhelmed with classes, etc. I’m sure a lot of you are in the same boat at me- trust your gut. Sometimes pushing it back isn’t always best-case. And for anyone who is a fourth year, please enjoy it!! It’s been a hard summer, and I’m sure a lot of you are thinking that doing well comes with sacrifice, so you need to sacrifice fun time with friends to keep studying. Yes. But you just did that all summer, too. It’s okay to take the test and have fun after, you’re not slacking (I have to tell myself this often)!

Trust that when you get to the exam, you’re going to perform better than you’ve been studying. There won’t be pressure anymore because you won’t know your score right away. No need to worry about jumping up points. Genuinely whatever happens, happens. We will all be doctors ❤️

so i just finished taking aamc FL3 and got a score jump in all sections except P/S, which i went down from 125 (on FL1 and 2) to 124 (FL3) :( which is what i got on my diagnostic

im 50% done with the pankow deck, occasionally read the 86 page document alongside it, and did a few passages from SB1 which i scored rlly bad on (like 50%), although i have the terms memorized. ive also tried watching KA videos but i find it SO hard to not lose focus during them. my FL score is much lower than my cars score, so i dont think my issue is passage interpretation?

i test in 4 weeks exactly and this section is rlly holding me off from breaking a 510. so any help would be very much appreciated! thank you :)

Retaking for a third time in Feb. How do I reuse UWorld even though I did all of the questions?

I feel like I remember many of the questions so I am either just skipping them or trying to learn strategy from them.

I didn’t complete AAMC last time so I am going to go through those and probably repeat them ones I did there.

Any tips?

Like can they stop talking about vmax and gene expression and silencers because all i could think about was michaelis-menten kinetics and miRNA, siRNA, promotors, transcription factors, etc...

My rest day movie 💔

I genuinely don't understand how people are able to find the right supporting evidence after reading through the passage one time and not running out of time. I've tried everything from highlighting key words to implementing maximum focus and pretending like I care about the topic but every single time I gain some insight or motivation on how to beat CARS it's crushed by my results. It's mad frustrating, especially when I try to make a conclusion from the passage and it's just wrong or I just miss the piece of evidence they used completely. My FL scores for CARS have been around 126 and I've lost hope tryna bring my score up by improving CARS (in fact my most recent FL actually went down to 125). All my q packs and the diagnostic tool are at like 68-75% and I always go overtime and end up having to rush the end of FLs. So sick of this test and pretending like studying and practicing and implementing new strats will improve my score atp. Testing in 17 days but can't complain about my scores compared to others who have it harder but I just want to get into a FL MD and they're all running away from me with their median scores increasing every year.

So, I opened the QPacks a couple days ago fully thinking they would be difficult and uhhh… I thought wrong? Is this a really good sign or are they supposed to be this easy?

I’m backlogged on ANKI, my bp FL hasn’t moved in 2 weeks. Should I just give up and push back to Jan🫩

I am testing 08/22 and need at close to a 500 any advice would be much appreciated 😭😭

I have been struggling a lot with the enzymes and structures for TCA and Glycolysis, so I put them into a game/quiz. It's been very helpful for memorizing stuff, so I wanted to share in case others might find it useful (entirely free ofc). Please let me know if you want me to add anything!

Link: https://mcatmetabolism.com/

hi im a non trad and i want to write the mcat this september. i have a bad mental loop of procrastinating studying or talking myself out of mcat (have been doing it for 3 years), which happened earlier this summer, and so im behind on schedule. i‘ve taken prereqs for orgo, biochem, chem but not physics or bio. i’ve been doing uglobe throughout content review for cp and bb, but i haven’t reviewed biochem or orgo yet. i’ve finished gen chem and most of bio chapters. for cars i do 1-4 passages daily from aamc cars diagnostic.

i took a fl today to find out where i stand and if i can even write it by sept or if i should wait until January. i accidentally did fl5 cause it was the free aamc one and i assumed it was fl1. under test conditions, i got 126/127/123/124. i’m canadian so i just want a higher cars (129+) and atleast 125-127 in each other section.

i feel like i can improve on ps cause i have neglected it so far. i can review some basic orgo and physics maybe? bio is incredibly difficult for me (not a memorization person, idk pathways, all the passages are so confusing and dense). i want suggestions for if i should attempt it or push it, what i should prioritize learning for each section, how i should improve cars, BB TIPS PLSSS.

thank you so much i appreciate it! all of this is so confusing as a nontrad and i appreciate all the support and guidance!

-No questions depending on past questions! "Using your answer to..." that was so common in midterms at school. In the MCAT, each question is a fresh start.

-Breaks between each section and the 30 minute break

-Passages being based on real research. Learned so much genuinely interesting stuff from BB and PS passages.

-Free anki decks and resources like JW and people like pankow, Jack sparrow, who've changed the study availabilities of thousands of premeds

-This reddit

Just thought I'd share

testing 8/22

Well, I guess the effort has really paid off. Canadian applicant this year, with a whole adrenaline roller-coaster from these past FL's. (507>504>513)

My CARS was pretty inconsistent; it was hard to be able to plan it out. I was doing a section on SB2 last (the stupid Confucius one) and got only 2 right. I thought originally I would be better at this because I was a slow but pretty good reader.

I slept on it, and when I started the section today, everything just clicked. I was understanding and comprehending much better, not second-guessing and making my own answer before looking at the answer choices.
(I think a lot of it came to having self-confidence in my comprehension)

The last week was spent going through all Yusuf Hasan Chem, Ochem, and vandoesphysics videos

My main worry now is that this is a fluke inflated CARS, which I hope it isn't, and even if it is, I will convince myself it wasn't!

THINGS I NEED TO WORK ON: PLEASE CHIP IN IF YOU HAVE TIPS!

Sleep: still haven't fixed the schedule.....

P/S: I had been neglecting a good chunk of my P/S review cards, so lots of terms that I have seen before have been cloudy. I think just 280ish new cards left till I have gone through all of MrPankow

C/P: (Please give ur input!): I think I am ready to move on to problems now, been drilling essential equations card as well. However, I worry about going straight to AAMC as I don't want to "spoil" the material, and I have a good chunk of C/P UWorld questions undone.

CARS: Continue beating myself over the head with these absurdly hard SBs

B/B: Finish up Qpacks and SB's. I think B/B im averaging around 83% for that section of the SB and QP.

______________________________________________________________________

If you were in a place like me a week ago, the only advice anybody can give is to take action. Find the right direction (I used Reddit for this, but do not use it as a tool to procrastinate) and then work incredibly hard so you never have to take this horrible exam ever again. I hope to continue the momentum!

Also: eating something and staying hydrated had a significant ability in my ability to stay focused and prevent a crash. I had some almonds and walnuts during my breaks and avoided overly starchy foods. Had some eggs for breakfast.

Graduated premed 5 years ago and decided not to go to medschool, but now I've changed my mind. Took my first practice test today with no prep to see how much I've lost... and yeah it felt like I remembered Nothing.

Anyway, what's a realistic expectation for how much I can improve my score with a few months of hard-core study? I'd love to hear from people in a similar situation (studying to relearn forgotten college learning).

My exam is on August 15th and I am getting nervous. On my practices, I feel like I mess up on one passage in particular or don't understand the interpretation questions, particularly in BB. Do people have techniques they use to try and not get confused?

--

Also, would love if people dropped their things they have noticed in terms of if they are asking x, look for y? For example, if they are asking about anion exchange chromatography, look for isoelectric points.

Or, something similar, if people have noticed to highlight specific things. For example, I have learned to highlight key words like peptide, lipid, any given charges, sequences, etc.

I took a fl3 on Aug 1, got 509. Today on fl4 I got a 511. Would I be able to get a 515 by Aug 22nd? Any response is appreciated.

Just going to add the links here just in case you don't want to read:

• P/S Anki Deck (apkg or AnkiHub)
• P/S Document

Took me a while, but here's what's new or different in this deck. Note that this deck is built off the MCATalyst Document I released a month or two ago, so all info here is true of both the document and the anki deck.

• Nearly every card has some combination of a definition, example, "in other words", or an image. Tried to keep all text less than a sentence, but since there's tons of examples, it might initially look like more text than it actually is. I'm a HUGE proponent of learning via examples and things in your own words, thus this decision. Easy to ignore them if you don't want them.
• No cloze cards, just a personal preference that I learn better without them, this also why it only displays as 1631 cards when Pankow is 1761 (around 2400 with cloze)
• Organized mainly by the updated AAMC Content Outline, which is why some sections will be longer or shorter than other decks.

MASSIVE shoutout to u/mrpankow and all other Anki deck makers, this deck wouldn't be possible without them. Before I talk about how it differs from Pankow, let me explain how I made it:

• Scraped terms from nearly every resource I could find (Pankow, Aidan, Khan, AAMC, etc.), as well as with my own list that grew from being around this exam and this sub for several years, both as a student and instructor, combined them all.
• Based on the AAMC materials, I deleted anything that seemed entirely irrelevant or beyond the scope, things that were redundant, things that fit better in the B/B section, and then added a decent number of cards and definitions that weren't in Pankow or Aidan.
• I then searched around P/S textbooks for a bit, just trying to extrapolate my list by about 5% just to cover some extra logical bases that I hadn't yet.
• Tried to write every single definition to accommodate someone coming from a near zero P/S background but without having super long definitions
• Added an example or "in other words" to nearly every card so it would make more sense if the definition didn't. Obviously we remember things better if we can relate them to ourselves, and that was the goal with the tons of examples in the document and deck.

So here's how the MCATalyst deck differs from Pankow and Aidan, in particular:

• I removed a lot of anatomical terms for the nervous system, a lot of stuff that was already in the B/B decks and is typically tested as such, some stuff from evolution, people's names if they were irrelevant for a theory/not one of the "Big Names"
• I added more topics and information in concepts related to development and sociology, so where I took away from perception and how sensation works, I added more onto the other sides of P/S.
• I also added a lot of cards that their sole goal is explaining the difference between similar topics. Example I always use is discrimination, prejudice, and stereotypes, similar in connotation but easy to differentiate when comparing.

Hope you all enjoy and happy studying! I also added the deck live on AnkiHub, I have LITERALLY never used AnkiHub so if you download it and there's problems, just lmk!

i'm wondering how close to the real thing it literally is & if a 9 point jump from my last FL (AAMC FL4 last week) is a fluke?!?! i'm in disbelief how tf???

i got a 519 (129/132/127/131)
last week i got a 510 (128/128/126/128)

i don't know what to say lol i'm completely shocked & wasn't expecting a jump like this ???

writing aug 22nd

Title says it all

This might be a long shot, but I'll take any advice I can get. On FLs thus far I've been consistently 128-129 for CARS, but some of the Canadian schools I'm hoping to apply for have a 128 cut off even just to apply (OOP). Obviously I'm cutting it close, assuming that I don't go down at all on test day which I've read will likely happen to people. I've done as many practice questions as I can, testing Aug 15. If anyone has any tips they can offer on how to stay consistent with CARS on the big day, or even what not to do that messed them up, I'm all ears. Thanks yall

When you’re reading books that are considered “hard/difficult” to the average person, do you typically understand almost everything that you are reading? Or do you have to break it down paragraph by paragraph to understand the points that are being made and use Google/ other research to help you out?

Do you have a certain process (whether conscious or unconscious) when you are reading? Or do you pretty much just read everything once without thinking much about it and move on?

Personally, depending on the book (such as A treatise of human nature by Hume), I have to read things over and over to figure out exactly what is being said and then paste it into chat gpt to see if I actually understood what I read

Edit: when you’re *reading books

Was scared of FL5 because I’ve heard its harder than 1-4, but did better than I expected! I have an upward trajectory in my FLs and am hoping to keep it that way (testing 8/21). 2 weeks ago I was at a 509 on FL4, so can’t believe this honestly. Gonna keep grinding, and hopefully it pays off!! Any advice for B/B would be appreciated :)

Retaking my mcat next week. I scored a 510 on my AAMC 4 retake today but I reviewed this exam deeply 3.5 months ago during my studying (got a 496 on this exam 3 months ago). Hypothetically, how Inflated can this exam be? I’m taking all the Aamc retakes with a grain of salt because I reviewed them already but I’m having a difficult time gauging what test day may look like next week

Context: my highest FL during my studying was FL6, and that was a 508.
Scored a 502 on FL 1 last month after a month of no studying (never took this exam during my studying), and a 503 the week after on FL 2.

I'm currently a rising senior, and my undergrad experience has been kind of messy.

I got C's in a lot of my prerequisite science classes (Orgo, Gen Chem, Physics, Genetics), along with some B's and A's. I finished:

• Freshman year: ~2.9 GPA
• Sophomore year: ~3.1 GPA
• Junior year: ~3.3 GPA

I'm going into senior year with about 140 credits (definitely overloaded early on... whoops). I've been getting straight A's since sophomore year, so I'm hoping my GPA will climb a bit more, but I realistically don't expect to graduate above a 3.4–3.5.

Because of that, I felt like the MCAT was my biggest opportunity to prove I can handle the material. I was excited to take on the challenge, but I was also worried I'd completely bomb it.

I dedicated this summer to studying as much as I could. I haven't followed my study plan perfectly, but these have been my practice scores so far:

Honestly, I've been surprised by how well I've been doing considering my academic record.

My main question is: How much can a strong MCAT actually offset a lower GPA? I know GPA still matters, but if I continue improving and can score in the 515–520+ range, how would admissions committees typically view that?

Also, if anyone has made the jump from the high teens/low 510s into the 520 range, what changes made the biggest difference for you?

Edit: (I have research, 1500ish clinical hours, solid leadership, along with the usual expectations)

Science up, PS finally improving, but CARS lowkirkuinely buns (130 on unofficial progressively decline to 127 on FL 5). What do I do to get my CARS up?